The Womb as Navigator, Executive Advisor, and Source of Feminine Power
Posted: August 19, 2014 Filed under: Body, Female Power, Feminine Power, Feminism, Womb | Tags: Feminism, Memory, Power, Tantric Dance of Feminine Power, Womb, Women's Bodies, Wonder Woman 49 CommentsI love to drop into my womb. I first learned about this practice when I started studying The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power™ over ten years ago. “Drop into your womb” is one of the instructions the teacher gives you before you can dance.
As someone who was used to connecting to my body from the outside-in—usually secondhand through the male gaze—I’d never thought to connect to my body from inside of myself, let alone to my womb of all places.
I Look At My Feet
Posted: July 30, 2014 Filed under: Beauty, Body, Body Image, Dance, Feminism, Movement | Tags: Beauty, Body Image, Memoir, Movement, Women's Bodies 39 CommentsI used to look at my feet and see big… long..ugly. At least that’s what some of my relatives told me they saw when I was growing up . So I stopped taking care of my feet.
In college I walked around the Berkeley campus for four years in Nordstrom style loafers. I bought them in all the different colors: Blue. Black. Beige. And red. When I’d wear out a pair, I’d buy another pair. I’d take the BART across the bay to San Francisco on a Saturday.
Once, when I went home for summer vacation, my aunt looked down and said, “What have you done to your feet? They look like you’ve been plowing the rice fields [in the Philippines]!” Oops. Then again, how would she know?
The Other “F” Word
Posted: June 24, 2014 Filed under: Body, Female Power, Feminism, Woman | Tags: Aging, Bodies, F-word, Feminism, Forties, Sexism, Women's Bodies 70 CommentsThree years ago I turned forty. I flipped out when it happened, even though I knew that the negative ideas about women hitting middle age are misogynistic and wrong.
Here are excerpts from my journal that I wrote in 2011 about this milestone age (Apparently I was watching a lot of Oprah back then):
- Oprah says that hiding your age is like denying your existence. Yet I can’t help myself. At parties any time the topic of age comes up I find myself leaving the room and running to get a drink. If I come back and people are still talking about age, I get up again, this time to go look for ice. I don’t want to admit that I’m 40—especially living in Hollywood where it seems like everyone I know is 25.
- I’d lower my age on Match.com if I wasn’t so opposed to lying. My ex-boyfriend says that a lot of guys who see my profile are writing me off right away just because the number “40” appears in my age box. It’s almost as if my age is my expiration date and I’ve turned into a carton of spoiled milk.
- People who know my real age say that I look pretty good “for 40.” Still, there’s that caveat, “for 40,” as if “looking good” and “40” don’t usually go together.
- I finally decided to stop checking my face in the mirror to see if any new wrinkles appeared overnight. I mean, what if by staring at myself under the blaring bathroom light, my forehead furrowed with worry, I’m making more wrinkles happen?
- I watched Oprah’s Lifeclass on OWN. The episode was about celebrities on aging. Actresses Ally McGraw, 72, and Bo Derek, 53, talked about how their necks are now showing their age. I thought, Fuck! Really? The neck? The fucking neck? One more body part to worry about.
The Story of a Woman in Sexual Pleasure
Posted: May 30, 2014 Filed under: Body, Feminism, Pleasure, Sexism, Sexual Pleasure, Woman | Tags: Bodies, Feminism, Masturbation, Memory, Sexism, Sexual Pleasure, Sexuality, Women's Bodies 84 CommentsA few years ago I was asked to participate in a storytelling show. The piece I read was called “My Vibrator Story.” I had written it in a workshop and test read the story at the end of class. The audience, made up of the other participants, was primarily women that day. My story, a personal tale about masturbation, ended up getting lots of laughs—so much so that I was invited to share it in front of a much larger, public audience.
But when the time came to read “My Vibrator Story” at this bigger event—no one had told me there would be over 100 people there—I bombed in my delivery of the piece. I indicated to the audience when I wanted them to laugh. I kept looking at them and smiling as I read as if to say, “This is one big joke, let’s not take me or my story too seriously.” The audience’s response, as I read my work and when I finished, was lukewarm.
On Mother’s Day Greetings and the Sacred Feminine
Posted: May 19, 2014 Filed under: Body, Female Power, Feminism, Objectification/Sexualization, Sexism, Woman | Tags: Bodies, Embodied, Feminine Awakening, Feminism, Memoir, Memory, Mother, Mother's Day, Power, Sacred Feminine, The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power, Woman, Women's Bodies 31 CommentsOn Mother’s Day, I deleted a Facebook post before I had a chance to publish it. The update was going to acknowledge all the moms that I know. The reason I never posted the message was that there was more to it. The post in its entirety would have said: “Happy Mother’s Day… so grateful to you moms for embodying the Sacred Feminine.”
We live in a world where greeting card companies have come up with all kinds of ways to say Happy Mother’s Day—from funny greetings, to the poetic kind, to religious-themed greetings, to cards that are purposely inappropriate. Still, I hesitated to put up my greeting because I worried that someone out there might think I was just being “woo-woo” spiritual or, even worse, take offense that I’d linked “mothers” to the “sacred feminine”—as if to put the two together would be blasphemous.
As a teenager and through my twenties I didn’t see much use for my femininity except for whatever purpose it could serve for attracting the opposite sex. After I grew breasts and hips I learned how to wiggle and sashay in such a way that if I walked into a room you’d have to look at me. I would constantly bat my eyelashes, flip my hair from side to side to give off a “Charlie’s Angels” effect, and speak from my throat (rather than my diaphragm) so my voice would sound huskier.
Owning My Voice
Posted: April 30, 2014 Filed under: Body, Creativity, Female Power, Feminism, Voice, Woman | Tags: Creativity, Empowerment, Power, Voice, Woman, Women's Bodies, WPLongform, Writing 73 CommentsFor years, I was terrified to show the world any of my own writing. I found ways to avoid professional work that would require a byline with my name attached to it. I was stymied by a number of fears: What if my writing isn’t good enough or what if it’s “too much?” Worse yet what if what I say offends, turns off, or upsets anyone, possibly everyone—rendering me undateable, unhireable, or, even, unfit to be part of society?
Stories from the Belly has been up and running for eight months. This post marks my 17th one. While the blog is fairly new, for me working as a blogger is not. I’ve been ghost blogging for eight years and written thousands of posts—only you would never know that any of them were written by me.
I’d even started other personal blogs in the past—four, to be exact (one of them I’d forgotten ever existed until I stumbled upon the URL in my bookmark folder the other day). I never made any of these sites available to the public.
Author Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own, “I would venture to guess that Anonymous, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” For a long time, I might as well have been this “Anonymous.”
Facing the Vagina
Posted: April 18, 2014 Filed under: Body, Body Image, Female Power, Feminism, Pleasure, Vagina, Woman | Tags: 101 Vagina, Babies, Bodies, Body, Body Image, Labiaplasty, Memory, Menstruation, Philip Werner, Vagina, Women's Bodies 48 CommentsI am a 9-year-old living with my family in Argentina. The day is so hot that if it weren’t a Saturday and we were at school the teachers would have fed us popsicles at recess to keep our temperatures from rising.
We are swimming in the shallow end of a pool. There are five of us.
It’s my turn to use the scuba mask. The other girls are bobbing around in a row.
I take a deep breath before dropping underwater… as I float by, each girl pushes the bottom of her bathing suit to the side to show me what’s behind the nylon fabric… thin slits between flesh are all I see… and then I’m up and out of the water, greeted by giggles as I gasp for air.
I take my place in line and pass the mask down to the next curious girl.
The Virgin Mary, Body Image, and Her Story
Posted: March 31, 2014 Filed under: Body, Body Image, Feminism, Woman | Tags: Body Image, Feminism, Lesley Hazelton, Religion, Sacred Feminine, Virgin Mary, Women's Bodies, Women's History Month, WPLongform 54 CommentsI grew up feeling reverent toward the Virgin Mary. When my pregnant mom still hadn’t gone into labor a few days after my due date, she prayed to the Holy Mother for help so that the doctor wouldn’t have to induce her. My mom started having contractions just hours later.
My parents gave me Mary’s name twice—Marie is my middle name and Lourdes, which is a French form of the name Mary, is my baptismal name. Every night as a child with my mom sitting bedside, I would pray aloud: “Hail Mary, full of Grace…. Blessed is the fruit of diamond Jesus…”
I would say the word “diamond” with special emphasis because I thought it was so beautiful that there was such a thing as a diamond Jesus even though I didn’t know what that was. It wasn’t until I was 10 that I figured out that the words were actually “thy womb Jesus” and understood what that even meant.
Birthing Sofia: On Whether to Mother
Posted: March 18, 2014 Filed under: Body, Feminism, Sexuality, Woman, Womb | Tags: Babies, Birth, Bodies, Body, Feminism, Memoir, Mother, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Woman, Women's Bodies 59 Comments“Honey, I’m not pregnant!” I told my boyfriend the other day.
“That’s good.” He replied.
But the news to both of us feels bittersweet.
